Monday, February 4, 2008

New On My Bookshelf

There is something exciting about a new book. Part of that excitement comes from the anticipation of learning what secrets the books holds and part of it is that a new book looks and smells like nothing else. It is as good as having a new car, but a whole lot less expensive.I have three new books waiting to be read. Maybe you would be interested in them too.Harold B. Morgan has compiled a pictorial book, Home Front Heroes: Evansville and the Tri-State in WWII, which I skimmed through briefly, but want to go through page by page soon. Photographs from the Evansville area as well as Henderson and Paducah, Kentucky show how the local residents adapted their lives around the war. All partipated in the war effort, from the youngest child to the oldest resident. Many of you probably know that Evansville had a shipyard, where 19,000 workers built LSTs during World War II. There is info on the shipyards, but that is not the focus of the book; there is much, much more. I was especially interested in the photos of the women and their involvement in the war effort. The book is available in my area at Barnes and Noble bookstore.Another book I am looking forward to reading is Frances, Kentucky: Days Gone By, which was compiled by Matthew T. Patton. This book is actually a reference book on this small Crittenden County town. There is information on everything from schools and school census records to cemetery recordings, town history, newspaper items from the early 1900s to an autobiography of James Riley Glass (1913). To learn about availability of this book, contact the author through his blog at http://dycusburg.blogspot.com/

The third book I look forward to reading concerns one of my favorite subjects - the Melungeons. Sometimes called a tri-racial group, these folks have been the subject of many articles and books and few of the authors agree on the origin of the Melungeons. Lisa Alther has written Kinfolks Falling Off the Family Tree (My Search for My Melungeon Ancestors). The author states that her relatives had extra thumbs (Yes, that's right!), which were removed and that prompted the author to try to discover who the Melungeons really were. I ordered my copy of this book from amazon.comSo, if we get a blizzard - or even if we do not - I have plenty to read.

6 comments:

Brenda, Thanks for mentioning the new books that you recently purchased. Someone posted a message on one of the Rootsweb Lists about Melungeons in her family and then I saw your post about Lisa Alther's book, Kinfolks Falling Off the Family Tree (My Search for My Melungeon Ancestors). I bought a copy of Lisa's book and have just started reading it.

I stumbled across this site today while searching through a South Carolina Genweb site and thought some of you might be interested, it is American Roma (Gypsy), Travellers, & "Others" at http://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/index.html. They have the following groups listed at this website: